Finance experts have put some popular methods of drying laundry to the test in a bid to find out the cheapest one.
Due to the ongoing cost of living crisis and soaring energy bills, more people are thinking about how they use electricity in their homes. Trying to cut down on expensive appliances is a good place to start, but it can be difficult to know if you're actually saving money.
Drying clothes in the winter is a big problem for households, as hanging laundry outside often just isn't possible. Recently, heated clothes airers and dehumidifiers have proven to be a popular choice, as well as tumble dryers for those of us who have them.
To help people decide which of these options will save you the most money, experts at NimbleFins have carried out a comparison between the three that shows exactly how much they both cost in the long run.
In the experiment, the experts found out how much each of these items would cost you to start off with.
A tumble dryer from Argos, which can hold 7kg of clothes in one load, will set you back £190. Meanwhile, a heated airer and a dehumidifier needed for the best results will cost £55 and £50 respectively.
The heated airer is able to hold 10kg of clothes at a time, which is more than the tumble dryer.
And the energy needed to run the airer is significantly lower at 230 watts per hour, compared to 2,006 watts per hour for the dryer.
But the lowest by far was the dehumidifier, which you can use alongside the heated airer, as it came in at just 22.5 watts per hour.
| Heated dryer vs. tumble dryer: which is cheaper? | Heated Dryer | Dehumidifier | Tumble Dryer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 kg drying capacity | 7 kg drying capacity | ||
| Cost to run | |||
| Watts per hour | 230 | 22.5 | 2006 |
| kW per hour | 0.23 | 0.0225 | 2 |
| Run time (hours) | 8 | 8 | 2.1 |
| Electricity consumed per full load (kWh) | 1.84 | 0.18 | 4.18 |
| Electricity cost per load (£) | £0.63 | £0.06 | £1.42 |
| Cost to buy | £55 | £50 | £190 |
Although the tumble dryer is technically more expensive, the heated airer would need to stay on for much longer to dry a load of laundry.
The airer and dehumidifier would need to operate for eight hours for the best results - meanwhile, the tumble dryer tested only needs two hours and five minutes of run time for perfectly dry clothes.
Heated airer vs tumble dryer - which is best?
The experts revealed that in terms of cost, then the heated airer is the most budget-friendly option for doing the laundry.
It would cost 63p in electricity for a full load on the clothes airer, plus 6p for the dehumidifier coming in at 69p in total. This is compared to £1.42 for the tumble dryer, saving you 73p for every use.
However, if you already have a tumble dryer in your house, it might be a while before you start saving money if you do choose to buy the airer instead.
Erin Yurday, CEO and co-founder of NimbleFins, says you'd need to do 143 loads of laundry using the heated clothes airer before you'd technically be saving any cash.
She explained: "The time it takes to dry laundry on a heated airer may be inconvenient for busy families with lots of washing or those used to tumble dryers.
"Overall, if you can afford it, it would take about six months to a year to repay the cost of investing in a heated clothes airer and dehumidifier depending on how much laundry someone does.
This isn’t too much time in the grand scheme of things, but it could take longer if you go for more expensive products, or if you don’t always use a tumble dryer. On warm sunny days, it may be just as fast to hang laundry outside, for free."
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